“Yes?”
“Whether”—was there ever a mouth so like a bit of charred stick as hers feels?—“you lost your head? or—whether you did—it—on purpose—with a deliberate intention of—suicide?”
The word clothes its ugliness in a hissing whisper, but there is no doubt as to his having heard it.
“What next?” he asks with—is it half-contempt, or what he means her to think so?—“what maggot will your brain breed next?”
But now that every muscle, nerve, and fibre of her body are strung up to their highest tension, he shall not escape her.
“That is no answer to my question. Did you lose your head? or did you mean to kill yourself?”
If he hesitates for one instant, she will know what to believe. But he does not hesitate.
“I lost my head!” he answers, meeting the thumbscrew and hot pincers of her torture-chamber without a wince. “Not having been brought up to the trade of hero, I did not understand the ropes, and—I lost my head!”
* * * * *
Did Rupert Campion speak truth? or has he added one more to the tale of noble lies?—to Rahab’s and Arria’s and Desdemona’s?